Science —

The weird science of rats and the smell of road rage

Feet of death, home sweet cave, the gentle touch of a p, and the wisdom of …

Rats get road rage via gasoline, find unleaded stressful: Maybe some of the erratic behavior we see on the roads can be ascribed to people who've breathed a bit too deeply while filling the tank. Rats made to inhale gasoline vapors experienced significant changes in neurotransmitter levels, and a corresponding increase in aggression. Unleaded gasoline apparently induced biochemical changes suggestive of oxidative stress, as well, although this effect wasn't seen when leaded was inhaled.

Drug users know their stuff better than legislators: It's fairly apparent that our system of drug laws is more the product of historical accident than rational analysis, as harmful, addictive substances like alcohol and tobacco are relatively unregulated. A team of researchers based in London has now found that drug users' ratings of hazardous substances place alcohol, tobacco, and solvents among the top-ten most dangerous substances. Ironically, the ratings provided by drug users more closely match those of addiction experts than the UK's drug laws do.

One of the authors of the paper happened to be David Nutt, who, until recently, served as a governmental scientific advisor on drug abuse. After Nutt criticized the UK's drug laws (presumably, based in part on this discrepancy), the government promptly fired him. That prompted outrage among the UK science establishment, which spilled over onto Twitter. Nutt's name was combined with the English term for termination of employment to ensure that the controversy could be followed by tracking #nuttsack.

I feel what you're trying to say: Obviously, speech is primarily an audible form of communication, but some new data indicates that people interpret what they hear based in part on what they feel. A number of similar-sounding letters—the authors use 'b' and 'p' as an example—differ in part based on the amount of air that gets expelled while they're being pronounced. The authors were able to take untrained subjects and expose them to puffs of air at the same time as they heard one of the ambiguous sound combinations. Subjects that were hit with the puff of air were more likely to mistake a b for a p, indicating that we literally have a feel for language.

Bats are willing to hit the road whenever the need arises: There have been extensive studies of how migratory behavior arises among the birds, but those aren't the only winged creatures that take part in extended migrations; over 30 species of bats do so as well. Researchers have now mapped migratory behavior against an evolutionary tree of bat species, and found that there's no single group of migratory bats. Instead, the behavior is widely scattered, suggesting that just about any species of bat can leave its homebody ways behind and start migrating if it helps deal with resource shortage. The one pattern that was obvious was that bats that roost in caves are much less likely to go migratory. Tree-roosting bats presumably have an easier time finding some place to stay at both ends of the migration.

For raptors, their feet are what they eat: Researchers at Montana State have gone through and done something similar with raptors, correlating prey with the shape of the digits and talons. Not surprisingly, the feet are very well adapted to the birds' feeding habits. Owls, which tend to hunt smaller prey, have oversized digits that allow them to simply grab their victims.

Falcons and eagles, which go after larger prey, have feet and talons that allow them to latch on to their prey. For falcons, that prey has generally been stunned by their strike, allowing them to leisurely sever the spinal cord. For larger hawks and eagles, the talons allow them to stand on top of their prey, immobilizing it while it's disemboweled. Anything that specializes in fish has curved talons, which reach an extreme in the osprey.

So, there you have it: a large collection of species with feet adapted to dealing death.